Category: creative writing prompts

Here’s the next book in our rebranded series of ideas and story prompts for writers.

All of the ideas have been edited and updated;
there’s a lovely new cover;
the Kindle price has been slashed to just 2.99;
and it’s available in paperback for the first time too!

It’s only available from Amazon, and to comply with their exclusivity requirements, we will no longer be selling it on the ideas4writers website.

Here’s the new description:

Write thrillers your readers will never forget!

No more ponderous, over-used plots; clichéd, one-dimensional characters; and stories that lack imagination and depth. Your plots will be epic, compelling and fresh; your heroes and villains will be complex and memorable; and your stories will blow your readers away.

Includes:

The Easy Way to Write Thrillers

The Formula that Works Every Time

The Best Heroes and Villains for your Stories

How to Thrill and Scare your Readers

How to get your Hero out of Trouble – in any situation

How to use the Different Types of Deadline

How to Increase the Drama to nail-biting levels

And much more

Plus you’ll get 40 great scene and storyline ideas you can use immediately or adapt as you wish

Like this:

Here’s the first book in our rebranded series of ideas and story prompts for writers.

All of the ideas have been edited and updated;
there’s a lovely new cover;
the Kindle price has been slashed to just 2.99;
and it’s now available in paperback too!

It’s only available from Amazon, and to comply with their exclusivity requirements, we will no longer be selling it on the ideas4writers website.

Here’s the new description:

Create romantic stories your readers will never forget. No more boring, over-used plots; clichéd, one-dimensional characters; or stories that lack imagination. Your plots will be fresh and exciting, your characters will be realistic and compelling, and your stories will be so full of imagination and depth that your readers will be hungry for more.

Here’s this month’s selection of What Ifs to help stimulate your writer’s brain. Let’s see what can you do with these! Some are deliberately vague or ambiguous so you can interpret them in different ways.

** NEW for 2017 ** We’ll be discussing these What Ifs in our Facebook group each day!We’ll post each day’s What If in the group first thing in the morning (UK time) and we’ll post our thoughts (i.e. Dave’s thoughts) in the early evening, including how we think you could best turn it a story. We hope you’ll join in too – just leave a comment under that day’s entry.
Our Facebook group is open to everyone. Just go to the group and click on the Join button.

The What Ifs for January and February, including Dave’s thoughts about them, are already in the group. Here are the ones we’ll be discussing during March:

1. you saw your name spelled out in the sky?

2. you had the magic touch?

3. you didn’t have any favourites?

4. you could only taste one flavour?

5. ghosts definitely existed and lived among us?

6. everyone owned at least one bomb?

7. you could only see the colour blue?

8. you owned your own museum?

9. you woke up to find you had a tattoo on your face?

10. your experience was not the same as everyone else’s?

11. your mileage varied?

12. you signed a petition but it had unforeseen consequences?

13. your local undertaker was a notorious crook?

14. you stuck rigidly to your principles?

15. your teaching methods were ridiculed?

16. your grandfather took you to a secret shed and revealed something astonishing to you? (He may be dead, which makes the story more interesting!)

17. you were regarded as an easy target?

18. you were determined to make the list of the top ten most famous people of this century?

19. you witnessed a crime that didn’t happen?

20. you advertised a service you had no ability to do?

21. humans had nine lives?

22. all advertising was banned?

23. you could only write well when you were in pain?

24. you knocked a cyclist off his bike but didn’t hang around to see if he was okay?

25. you were given a second chance?

26. people started dying and the only connection was that they had been reading one of your books when it happened?

27. your home was haunted by a ghost that could see into the future?

28. your child kept inventing things?

29. you felt compelled to investigate an unsolved crime – and then discovered that you had committed it?

30. you could have prevented or avoided the problem but you let it happen anyway?

31. you made more money from failing at things than you did from succeeding?

If you’d like to send in a What If for us to discuss in the Facebook group please email it to: mail@ideas4writers.co.uk or leave a comment in the group.

If you’ve come up with a really great What If that you’re planning to use in a story and you’d like our thoughts on it, but without anyone else seeing it, we can do that too! (There’s a small charge to cover our time – and a 50% discount for lifetime members – see below.) Email us at the address above for more details.

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers
and get all 40+ of our ebooks for just £49.95

Like this:

Here’s this month’s selection of What Ifs to help stimulate your writer’s brain. Let’s see what can you do with these! Some are deliberately vague or ambiguous so you can interpret them in different ways.

** NEW for 2017 ** We’ll be discussing these What Ifs in our Facebook group each day!We’ll post each day’s What If in the group first thing in the morning (UK time) and we’ll post our thoughts (i.e. Dave’s thoughts) in the early evening, including how we think you could best turn it a story. We hope you’ll join in too – just leave a comment under that day’s entry.
Our Facebook group is open to everyone. Just go to the group and click on the Join button.

The What Ifs for January, including Dave’s thoughts about them, are already in the group. Here are the ones we’ll be discussing during February:

1. What if people of different religions were never allowed to mix?

2. What if people of different races were never allowed to mix?

3. What if gravity weakened… and then stopped?

4. What if you spent your whole life balanced on a ball?

5. What if you spent your whole life on stilts?

6. What if you were an island?

7. What if you were the black sheep of your family?

8. What if something you thought was inanimate was trying to kill you?

9. What if a typo had far-reaching consequences?

10. What if birds talked like humans?

11. What if schools were abolished?

12. What if you wanted to be alone but your family, friends or colleagues wouldn’t let you?

13. What if your version of the truth was different from other people’s?

14. What if rocks were alive?

15. What if you spent the day coming up with new words?

16. What if taxes were higher than wages?

17. What if you ignored the signs?

18. What if everyone was free?

19. What if you won the jackpot on the lottery even though you hadn’t bought a ticket?

20. What if everyone could see auras?

21. What if whenever anyone died we threw them on the fire and a living baby came out of the flames to take their place?

22. What if your dog trained you to do tricks?

23. What if the medicine you were taking to make you better was actually making you sicker?

24. What if you were out of time?

25. What if you took revenge in subtle ways?

26. What if you were not from Earth?

27. What if the legal system was so simple that anyone could understand it?

28. What if you always knew where everything was?

If you’d like to send in a What If for us to discuss in the Facebook group please email it to: mail@ideas4writers.co.uk or leave a comment in the group.

If you’ve come up with a really great What If that you’re planning to use in a story and you’d like our thoughts on it, but without anyone else seeing it, we can do that too. (There’s a small charge to cover our time – and a discount for lifetime members – see below.) Email us at the address above for more details.

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers
and get all 40+ of our ebooks for just £49.95

Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in July 2017 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time to find markets, and research and write your articles.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for July from The Date-A-Base Book 2017. There are 306 anniversaries for July in the book (more than six times more than listed here). The book covers the whole of 2017 from January to December and features more than 4,000 anniversaries in total.

If you need to work further ahead, Next Year’s News 2018 (the new name for the Date-A-Base Book series) is also available!

Just one published article should cover the cost of your copy many times over – and the book also explains how to get your anniversary articles and features published in newspapers and magazines, on radio and TV, and on paid sites online.

300 years ago (17 Jul 1717)
Handel’s Water Music was performed for the first time, on a barge on the River Thames in London. King George I sailed in the royal barge to hear the music, and was accompanied by many Londoners in their own boats.

250 years ago (11 Jul 1767)
Birth of John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States (1825-29).

200 years ago (12 Jul 1817)
Birth of Henry David Thoreau, American essayist, poet, philosopher and advocate of civil liberties. A leading transcendentalist. Best known for his book Walden (a record of his experiment in simple living) and for his essay Civil Disobedience.

200 years ago (18 Jul 1817)
Death of Jane Austen, British romantic novelist. One of the most widely read writers in English literature. She helped set the character of the modern novel. Her books include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

150 years ago (1 Jul 1867)
The Dominion of Canada was established when the British North America Act (also known as Constitution Act of 1867) came into effect. It was comprised of 4 provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. (The event is now celebrated annually in Canada as Canada Day.)

150 years ago (5 Jul 1867)
Birth of A. E. Douglass, American astronomer and archaeologist. Founder of the field of dendrochronology (dating past events by analysing the ring growth patterns in trees). He also discovered a correlation between the sunspot cycle and tree rings.

150 years ago (24 Jul 1867)
Birth of E. F. Benson, British novelist, short story writer, biographer and memoirist. Best known for his novels featuring the characters Mapp and Lucia.

150 years ago (26 Jul 1867)
Death of Otto, first King of modern Greece (1832-62).

150 years ago (31 Jul 1867)
Birth of S. S. Kresge, American merchant who founded a chain of discount stores which later became Kmart.

125 years ago (18 Jul 1892)
Death of Thomas Cook, pioneering British travel agent. Founder of Thomas Cook & Son. Regarded as the inventor of modern tourism.

100 years ago (7 Jul 1917)
World War I: the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was founded in the UK. For the first time, women were able to enlist in the Army and serve alongside their male counterparts in France (in non-combat roles).

100 years ago (16 – 20 Jul 1917)
Russian Revolution – the July Days demonstrations, Petrograd. The Russian military attacked peaceful demonstrations by soldiers and industrial workers who were protesting against the Russian Provisional Government. Provisional Prime Minister Georgy Lvov resigned on 21st July and was succeeded by Alexander Kerensky (until 7th November when he was also overthrown in the October Revolution).

100 years ago (17 Jul 1917)
World War I: King George V changed the name of the British royal family from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor (due to the anti-German sentiment in Britain ).

100 years ago (20 Jul 1917)
World War I: the first military draft lottery was held in the USA to select the order in which men would be called for service in WWI. 1,374,000 men were selected for examination, of whom 687,000 were called for immediate service. A further 10 million men were listed for future service.

100 years ago (24 Jul 1917)
World War I: Dutch-born exotic dancer Mata Hari went on trial in France, accused of spying for Germany. She was convicted and sentenced to death. (Executed: 15th October 1917.)

100 years ago (27 Jul 1917)
Death of Emil Theodor Kocher, pioneering Swiss surgeon. Winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the thyroid gland. He also made several other important contributions to surgery, promoted aseptic surgery and scientific methods, reduced mortality from surgery, and invented new techniques, instruments and appliances.

100 years ago (31 Jul – 10 Nov 1917)
World War I – the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as the Third Battle of Ypres), Belgium. One of the greatest disasters of the war for both sides. Casualty figures were enormous, but the Allies were better able to bear the heavy losses as the war continued.

80 years ago (7 – 9 Jul 1937)
The Second Sino-Japanese War began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (the Battle of Lugou Bridge). Japanese troops made an assault on an important access point to the city of Beijing, China. This developed into a full-scale war, and then into the Pacific theatre of war during WWII, which continued until 1945.

75 years ago (1 – 27 Jul 1942)
World War II – the First Battle of El Alamein, Egypt. The Allies prevented the Germans and Italians from advancing into Egypt.

75 years ago (4 Jul 1942)
World War II: the Siege of Sevastopol ended. Axis forces captured the Crimean port city which they had first attacked in October 1941.

75 years ago (6 Jul 1942)
Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in a secret annex at her father’s workplace in Amsterdam.

75 years ago (23 Jul 1942)
Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland began operating. (By October 1943 around 850,000 people had been killed there by gassing.)

75 years ago (31 Jul 1942)
The charity Oxfam was founded in the UK (as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief).

70 years ago (2 Jul 1947)
The Roswell Incident, New Mexico, USA. A UFO apparently crash-landed on a ranch, and debris with strange markings and unusual properties was found. The U.S. Air Force claimed it was just a weather balloon. Some witnesses reported seeing the bodies of aliens, which the Air Force later said were mannequins.

70 years ago (9 Jul 1947)
Florence Blanchfield was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, becoming the first woman in the USA to hold permanent military rank.

70 years ago (11 Jul 1947)
Exodus 1947. The ship SS Exodus carrying illegal Jewish emigrants from France set sail for the British Mandate of Palestine. Many of the passengers were Holocaust survivors. On arrival, the British packed them into 3 ships and deported them (on 19th July) back to France. On reaching Marseilles (on 2nd August), they refused to leave the ships and were taken to Germany where they were held in poor conditions in refugee camps. The event was widely covered in the media and caused Britain significant embarrassment. (About half the emigrants ended up in detainment camps in Cyprus when they tried to make the journey again. Britain recognised Israel in January 1949 and the detainees were transferred there.)

70 years ago (26 Jul 1947)
U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law. It led to the creation of the Department of Defense, the National Military Establishment, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and separated the Army Air Forces into its own service – the Department of the Air Force. (Effective from 18th September 1947.)

60 years ago (6 Jul 1957)
American tennis player Althea Gibson became the first black player to win a Wimbledon singles title.

60 years ago (6 Jul 1957)
John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at a church hall in Liverpool, England, where 16-year-old Lennon was performing with his skiffle group, the Quarrymen. 15-year-old McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly afterwards, and the pair went on to form the Beatles.

60 years ago (12 Jul 1957)
The Sodium Reactor Experiment, the first nuclear reactor in the USA to generate electricity for the commercial power grid, began operating in Simi Valley, California. It produced power for Los Angeles. (It experienced a partial meltdown in July 1959. It was restarted in September 1960, and shut down in February 1964. Removal of the reactor was completed in 1981.)

60 years ago (29 Jul 1957)
The International Atomic Energy Agency was established. It promotes the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

50 years ago (1 Jul 1967)
The European Economic Community, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community merged into a single organisation. Many people regard this event as the creation of the European Union.

50 years ago (1 Jul 1967)
BBC2 became the first TV channel in Europe to broadcast regularly in colour.

50 years ago (5 Jul 1967)
Israel annexed the Gaza Strip following the Six-Day War. (Israel officially withdrew from Gaza in September 2005, but as it continues to control the airspace and coastline it is still regarded as an occupying power by the UN.)

50 years ago (6 Jul 1967 – 15 Jan 1970)
Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War). Nigerian government forces invaded the breakaway Republic of Biafra which had seceded in May. Nigerian victory: Biafra was reintegrated into Nigeria.

50 years ago (8 Jul 1967)
Death of Vivien Leigh, award-winning Indian-born British stage and film actress (Gone with the Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire and more).

50 years ago (21 Jul 1967)
Death of Basil Rathbone, Tony Award-winning South African-born British stage, film and radio actor. Best known for his role as Sherlock Holmes.

50 years ago (27 Jul 1967)
The Criminal Justice Act 1967 received Royal Assent in England and Wales. It allowed majority verdicts for juries in criminal trials, removing the need for unanimous verdicts. (The first case in the UK to be decided by a majority verdict was in Brighton on 5th October 1967.)

50 years ago (27 Jul 1967)
The Sexual Offences Act received Royal Assent in England and Wales (but excluded the Merchant Navy and Armed Forces). It decriminalised homosexual acts in private between consenting males aged 21 or over.

40 years ago (1 Jul 1977)
British tennis player Virginia Wade won the ladies singles championship at Wimbledon. (She remains the last British woman to do so.)

30 years ago (29 Jul 1987)
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand ratified the Treaty of Canterbury – the agreement to build the Channel Tunnel. (Construction began on 15th December.)

20 years ago (1 Jul 1997)
The sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred from the UK to China.

20 years ago (9 Jul 1997)
The CEO of Apple Computer, Gil Amelio, was forced to resign following a boardroom coup led by Steve Jobs. The coup followed heavy financial losses and a slump in shares. (Jobs became interim CEO in September and began restructuring the company.)

20 years ago (20 Jul 1997)
The second IRA ceasefire in 3 years came into effect in Northern Ireland. There were sporadic outbreaks of violence afterwards, but the ceasefire lasted, leading to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in May 1998.

10 years ago (1 Jul 2007)
Smoking was banned in all enclosed workplaces in England. Similar bans were already in place in Scotland (26th March 2006), Wales (2nd April 2007) and Northern Ireland (30th April 2007).

Become a lifetime member of ideas4writers
and get ALL 40 of our ebooks
(including The Date-A-Base Book 2017 and
Next Year’s News 2018) for just £49.95!

If you go to the ideas4writers Facebook group you’ll see an exciting new feature. Each day we’re choosing one of the What Ifs we posted on the blog at the beginning of each month, and we’re discussing it in depth, expanding and enlarging on it, and looking at the story possibilities in each one. I hope you find it useful. It’s certainly stretching my imagination!

The Facebook group is open to anyone who wants to join. Just go to the group and click the Join button and I’ll grant you access the next time I’m on Facebook. You don’t need to be a member of the ideas4writers website or the blog. Your friends can join too – just let them know where to find us. The more people who join, the better the discussions should be, and the more ideas we’ll get for bigger and better stories.

If you’re a member of the ideas4writers website, you might have spotted that our forum software has died. We’re going to redesign the site over the next few months, so it seems silly to replace the forum software with something else, only to have to scrap it again when the new site launches. So we’re using the Facebook group as our forum for now, and directing all our members there instead.

When the new website launches, the forum will be at the front of the site, not hidden away in the members’ section, so everyone will be able to use it.

DAVE’S NEWS

I hope you’ve made a great start to your writing in 2017. I have huge plans for the year, and I’ve made a big wall chart with all the projects and timelines I’ll be working on. It looks … scary. But just about doable with a lot of work (and no procrastinating).

You might know that I get most of my ideas while I’m out walking, so when I saw the Walk 1,000 Miles in 2017 challenge, I immediately signed up for it. As I write this I’ve just completed the walk for day 9 and my total so far is 33 miles (8 miles more than the target) so it’s going well – I could even afford to take a couple of days off. Snow is forecast for the end of the week, which might limit the walks for a few days. (But I’ll believe it when I see it – it rarely snows here.)

I’m planning to do some longer walks over the summer. There are about 50 walking routes through the Blackdown Hills, about 20 minutes from here, that I haven’t explored yet. I’m also part of a walking group, but they only walk on Wednesday evenings between May and August.

If I’m walking on my own (which is most of the time – the rest of the family are not walkers!) I take my phone and headphones with me and listen to podcasts to keep me company. They help the miles fly by, and don’t inhibit the flow of ideas. I have Evernote on my phone, so it’s easy to note down (or speak) each idea as it occurs, or take a quick photo, and file it in the relevant section.

The podcasts I listen to are: The Creative Penn, the Sell More Books Show, Write 2B Read, and a new one called the Book Launch Show. I also download and listen to the Radio 4 shows The News Quiz and the The Now Show when they’re on – but they’re not on at the moment.

I must leave you now as it’s 9 pm and I have a chapter to write before bedtime. I hope to connect with you in the Facebook group. Or I’ll see you here this time next week with 50 Newsworthy Anniversaries in July 2017 for you to write about.

Happy New Year! Here’s this month’s selection of What Ifs to stimulate your writing brain. Let’s see what can you do with these! Some are deliberately vague or ambiguous so you can interpret them in different ways.

Pages

Next Year’s News 2018

Over 5,000 newsworthy anniversaries in 2018 for you to write about (and make money from). Includes events, discoveries, inventions, and famous births and deathsClick here for full details

How to Win Short Story Competitions

Two competition judges discuss everything they know about entering, judging and (most importantly) winning short story competitions, in an easy-to-follow question and answer format.
Click here for full details

The fastest way to write your book

How professional authors write full-length,
best selling books in just days or weeks rather than months or years. And how you can do it too!Click here for full details